The Marian Feasts

The Assumption or Dormition of Mary; the Immaculate Conception

August 15 (the Assumption, or the Dormition in the East); December 8 (the Immaculate Conception in the West); December 9 in the Orthodox Church (the Conception of the Theotokos by Anna)

The bishop, a careful collector of what churches believed, admitted that he knew nothing definite about how Mary’s life ended. The Catholic Encyclopedia reports it. This is not a feast, but it is the state of knowledge in about the year 400.

451 (told in the 8th century)

John of Damascus, in the 8th century, reports that Juvenal told the emperor Marcian that Mary’s tomb had been opened and found empty. No source from 451 records it, so it is a later story, not evidence of a feast.

Says the feast of Mary’s falling asleep was kept in Palestine before the year 500, probably in August. It is the first surviving record of the Dormition or Assumption, about five centuries after the church began. In Egypt and Arabia it was kept in January.

Fixes the feast on August 15 for the Greek Empire, if the account in the Liber Pontificalis is correct. Until then some kept it in January with the monks of Egypt and others in August with those of Palestine.

At Rome the feast of the Assumption is one of the principal festivals, with a procession from the church of St. Hadrian.

Writes a canon for the feast of the Conception of Mary, the oldest genuine document of the feast. The Catholic Encyclopedia places his hymns in the second half of the 7th century, while he was a monk near Jerusalem; he died archbishop of Crete about 720. The Eastern feast keeps the conception of Mary by Anna as a holy event. It does not say that Mary was free from original sin.

Adds an octave, a week of observance, to the feast of the Assumption at Rome.

The first definite and reliable record of the feast of Mary’s conception in the West, in a calendar from Winchester, England. It is about a thousand years after the church began.

Osbert de Clare, prior of Westminster, tries to introduce the feast. A number of monks rise against him in the choir and say it must not be kept, because it does not have the authority of Rome. Two bishops had declared it forbidden by a council. A council at London decided for the feast in 1129. It shows the feast was new and disputed in England.

Writes a vehement letter (Epistle 174) to the canons of Lyons, who had brought the feast of Mary’s conception into their choir, protesting what the Catholic Encyclopedia calls a new way of honoring Mary. Bernard held that Mary could be sanctified only after her conception. The Encyclopedia prints the year of the canons’ action as 1240, which cannot be right, since Bernard died in 1153; the letter is usually dated about 1138–1140.

Holds that Mary was sanctified after her conception, because otherwise Christ would not be the Savior of all men. Duns Scotus (d. 1308) answers that Christ saved her by preserving her from sin, with the axiom decuit, potuit, ergo fecit: it was fitting, God could, therefore He did.

It remains, therefore, that the Blessed Virgin was sanctified after animation.

Adopts the feast of the Conception for the whole Latin Church. In 1483 he forbids, on pain of excommunication, either side to call the other heretical. The question was still open in the church nearly fifteen centuries after Christ.

Preaches that Mary is in heaven but that the manner is unknown and cannot be made an article of faith. The Lutheran churches still keep a day of Mary, but without the Assumption as a dogma.

There can be no doubt that the Virgin Mary is in heaven. How it happened we do not know. And since the Holy Spirit has told us nothing about it, we can make of it no article of faith.

In its decree on original sin it says it is not its intention to include the Blessed and Immaculate Virgin Mary. It does not define the doctrine, and the dispute goes on for three more centuries.

Defines the Immaculate Conception as a doctrine revealed by God and to be held firmly and constantly by all the faithful. Anyone who thinks otherwise is told he has suffered shipwreck concerning the faith.

was preserved free from all stain of original sin

Defines the Assumption as a divinely revealed dogma. The definition does not say whether Mary died first.

was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory

Teaches that Mary, taken to heaven, continues by constant intercession to bring the gifts of eternal salvation, and is invoked as Advocate, Auxiliatrix, Adjutrix and Mediatrix. It adds that this takes nothing from Christ the one Mediator.

Therefore the Blessed Virgin is invoked by the Church under the titles of Advocate, Auxiliatrix, Adjutrix, and Mediatrix.

The bishops decree that whenever January 1 (Mary, Mother of God), August 15 (the Assumption) or November 1 (All Saints) falls on a Saturday or a Monday, the precept to attend Mass is abrogated. The Holy See confirmed the decree on July 4, 1992, and it took effect on January 1, 1993. The decree names only these three days. Christmas and December 8, the Immaculate Conception, are not covered, so the duty stands for them whatever day they fall on.

Whenever January 1, the solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, or August 15, the solemnity of the Assumption, or November 1, the solemnity of All Saints, falls on a Saturday or on a Monday, the precept to attend Mass is abrogated.

Says the faithful are obliged to take part in the Eucharist on days of obligation, unless excused for a serious reason or dispensed by their own pastor, and that those who deliberately fail in this obligation commit a grave sin. The Code of Canon Law (canon 1246) lists Mary, Mother of God, the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption among the days of obligation.

Those who deliberately fail in this obligation commit a grave sin.

The Assumption feast seems to have grown out of Jerusalem’s memory of Mary and the shrines tied to her, such as the Kathisma and the tomb at Gethsemane. Its content comes from the Transitus Mariae stories of her death, the gathering of the apostles and the taking up of her body, which survive in manuscripts of the 5th and 6th centuries. Epiphanius, about 400, knew of no tradition (H1). The Catholic Encyclopedia says plainly that belief in the bodily assumption “is founded on the apocryphal treatise De Obitu S. Dominae”, of the 4th or 5th century, and that the first six centuries did not know of Mary’s tomb at Jerusalem. It adds that Catholic faith derives the doctrine from apostolic tradition.

The Immaculate Conception began as something else. The Eastern feast kept Anna’s conceiving of Mary as a holy event (H6) and never claimed she was free from original sin. The Western feast came from Anglo-Saxon England (H8) and became a long quarrel (H9, H10, H11, H12), settled only in 1854 (H15). Both dogmas rest, in the Roman Church’s teaching, on apostolic tradition that Scripture states only by implication. This page weighs that claim by the text (A4).

Apostolic tradition

A legend that became a feast

Several traditions at once (Shoemaker)

Roman Catholics

The Eastern Orthodox

The Oriental Orthodox

Anglicans

Lutherans

Reformed, Baptist, evangelical and Pentecostal churches

The Churches of Christ

Masses and holy days of obligation

Both feasts are solemnities in the Roman Rite and appear in canon 1246. In the United States the obligation for August 15 is lifted when it falls on a Saturday or Monday; December 8 has no such exception.

The Dormition Fast and Paraclesis

The Orthodox keep a strict fast from August 1 to 14, with Paraclesis services to the Theotokos, and the leave-taking of the feast on August 23.

Processions

A Roman procession for the Assumption is attested by about 700 (H5). Jerusalem has burial-rite processions to Gethsemane from August 12 to 14.

Prayer to Mary

Catholic and Orthodox services ask Mary to pray and intercede. The Orthodox form is “Most Holy Theotokos, save us”, which the OCA’s life of the feast says the apostles cried when they set aside a portion of bread in her honor, after her burial. This is the practice the doctrine card weighs.

Blessing of herbs and fruits

On August 15 herbs, fruits and grain are blessed, in a German formula from the 10th century. The Roman Ritual frames it as a harvest thanksgiving.

Novenas and Lourdes

Catholics pray novenas before both feasts. The pilgrimage to Lourdes is tied to the title “Immaculate Conception”, which Bernadette Soubirous reported the Lady gave on March 25, 1858.

A public holiday

August 15 is a public holiday in Italy (Ferragosto), France, Spain, Poland, Austria and elsewhere.

Scripture honors Mary

She is highly favored, blessed among women, and calls herself blessed by all generations (S1, S2, S3).

Gabriel greets her as “highly favored” (S1). Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, says “Blessed art thou among women” (S2). Mary herself says “from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed” (S3). So the church honors her, as the text does: as the mother of the Lord, a servant who believed, and the one the angel called favored. To honor her is to say what Luke says. The page asks only what more the text allows.

Scripture is silent on her conception and her end

Mary’s last mention is among the praying disciples in Acts (S5); nothing is said of her conception or of her death.

At the cross Jesus commits His mother to the disciple He loved, and he took her to his own home (S4). The last time Scripture names her is among the disciples who “continued stedfastly in prayer” after the ascension (S5). The New Testament says nothing of her conception, her death or any taking up of her body. Paul says “all have sinned” (Romans 3:23), and Scripture names one exception, Christ, “yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). Mary calls God “my Saviour” (Luke 1:47). Catholics answer that she was saved by being kept from sin, and the texts on this are weighed below (S16, S17). The case on this page is that the dogma needs a second exception, and no apostle gives one (A4).

Prayer goes to the Father, through the one mediator

The New Testament teaches prayer to the Father, through Christ, our one mediator and high priest (S6, S7, S8).

“There is one God, one mediator also between God and men, himself man, Christ Jesus” (S6). Jesus teaches His disciples to pray “Our Father who art in heaven” (S7), and the writer to the Hebrews calls Christians to “draw near with boldness unto the throne of grace” because they have a great high priest (S8). No text tells a Christian to ask Mary, or any departed saint, to pray for them, and none shows anyone doing so.

Rome states the opposing teaching with care: Mary’s intercession “neither takes away from nor adds anything to” Christ’s mediation (Lumen Gentium 62, H17). Catholics add that it is like one Christian praying for another. The living are indeed told to pray for each other (1 Timothy 2:1; Romans 15:30). But the Scripture speaks of the living praying for the living. It shows no prayer addressed to the departed, no assurance that they hear, and no command to ask them. The step from asking a friend to pray to addressing someone in heaven needs a text, and there is none. That is the missing premise, and it is the page’s ground: worship is done “in the name of the Lord Jesus” (Colossians 3:17), by His authority, and what the text does not give is not the church’s to add (Matthew 15:9). The New Testament gives no command, example or promise of prayer to the dead.

No teaching beyond what the apostles delivered may bind the church

The apostles’ word is the test of any teaching, and no angel, church or pope may add to it (S9, S10).

Paul says that even “an angel from heaven” who preaches another gospel than the one the apostles delivered is to be anathema (S9). The Bereans are called more noble because they examined the Scriptures daily “whether these things were so” (S10). Catholics reply, from 2 Thessalonians 2:15, that Paul’s own “traditions” were taught by word as well as by letter. That is true. The question is whether a given teaching is one the apostles taught by word. For the Assumption and the Immaculate Conception no record exists for the first four or five centuries, and a bishop who wrote at length on what churches believed (H1) knew nothing of how her life ended. A claim of apostolic tradition must show its line back to the apostles. These do not: the Catholic Encyclopedia grounds the bodily assumption in an apocryphal treatise of the 4th or 5th century, and the Immaculate Conception was openly disputed in the church until 1854 (H12, H14). The faith was “once for all delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3), so what was not delivered then cannot be added eighteen centuries later. A church’s decree, however solemn (H15, H16), cannot supply the missing apostolic word, and Jesus names worship that teaches human precepts as doctrine (Matthew 15:9).

The church’s appointed day and memorial

The New Testament gives the church the first day and the Supper; no feast of Mary is among them (S11, S12).

The church gathered “upon the first day of the week” to break bread (S11), and the Lord gave the memorial: “this do in remembrance of me”, proclaiming His death “till he come” (S12). That is the appointed remembrance. Apostolic example binds, and a specific appointment excludes other kinds: the church has no warrant to add a yearly feast of Mary to its worship. This page does not say Mary may not be honored. It says the church’s worship is not the place for a feast the text never gave.

Days are a matter of conscience for each believer

Romans 14 leaves a believer free to regard a day, and forbids judging one who does not (S13, S14).

“One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let each man be fully assured in his own mind” (S13). The days at Rome were most likely Jewish days and fasts, so Paul is not approving a Christian feast; but he gives the rule for a believer’s own regard for a day: it is between the believer and the Lord. And “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a feast day” (S14) forbids judging a believer by the calendar. A Christian may thank God for Mary’s faith on any day and enjoy August 15 as a civil holiday. What they may not do is bind the day on others, or make it a holy day of the church’s worship (A5).

A duty said to bind gravely, lifted when the day falls on a Saturday or a Monday

Jesus faults worship that teaches the precepts of men as doctrine (S15); a duty the bishops lift by the calendar is the church’s rule.

The Catholic Church makes January 1 (Mary, Mother of God), August 15 (the Assumption) and December 8 (the Immaculate Conception) holy days of obligation, and says those who deliberately fail to attend Mass on such days commit a grave sin (H19). Yet in 1991 the American bishops decreed that when January 1 or August 15 falls on a Saturday or a Monday, “the precept to attend Mass is abrogated”, and the Holy See confirmed it (H18). So the Assumption, defined in 1950 as a dogma revealed by God (H16), has a feast that in some years binds no one. The Catholic answer is that the feast is church law and the dogma is not, and that Christ gave the church the power to bind and to loose (Matthew 16:19). That answer grants the point: a duty said to bind under grave sin, which lapses beside a weekend, is the church’s rule and not God’s, and no word of God calls for these feasts at all (A5). To bind them on the conscience is to teach a precept of men as doctrine (S15).

No survey of Mass attendance on these days was found, and the page makes no claim about it. This weighs the claim to bind, not the Catholics who keep the days or miss them.

Mary calls God “my Saviour”. Only a sinner needs a Savior, so Mary was a sinner, and the Immaculate Conception is false.

Catholics answer in their own terms: Mary was saved in the fullest way, by being kept from sin in view of Christ’s merits (Ineffabilis Deus), the answer Scotus gave to Aquinas (H11). Aquinas himself drew the other conclusion, that she was sanctified after her conception, because Christ is the Savior of all. The verse shows that Mary looked to God as her Savior, as every believer does, and speaks of her “low estate”. It does not say from what she was saved, so it does not settle the question alone. Read with Romans 3:23 (S17) it fits a believer saved from sin; the reading that she was saved by never sinning is the one that needs a text, and none is given (A4).

“All have sinned.” Mary is one of all, so she too sinned.

Paul’s point is that Jew and Gentile alike are under sin: “There is none righteous, no, not one” (3:10). Catholics reply that Mary is an exception by grace, as Christ is an exception by nature. But Scripture states Christ’s exception, “yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15), and states no other. The verse does not name Mary, so it does not by itself prove she sinned; what it does is put the burden on anyone who claims a second exception, and no text meets it. That is the weight the verse carries here, and no more.

When a woman blesses the womb that bore Him, Jesus answers “Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it”. He turns praise away from His mother.

Jesus does not deny that Mary is blessed. Luke has already recorded that all generations will call her so (S3). He puts obedience above kinship and places the blessing on hearing and keeping the word, as Mary did. It speaks against putting her above that, but it neither teaches nor denies any Marian dogma. This is a right use only as a measure of proportion.

The resurrection of those who are Christ’s comes “at his coming”, and each “in his own order”. A bodily taking up of Mary before then goes against that order.

The passage does not name Mary, and Catholics say her privilege is an exception, as God took Enoch and Elijah (S23). The force of the text is that Paul gives an order, and nothing in it marks a second exception beside Christ. But Scripture does record exceptions, and a verse on order cannot prove one did not happen. The real point is that Scripture records no word of an exception for Mary (A2, A4).

The woman and her seed are at enmity with the serpent. Pius IX and Pius XII read the woman as Mary, in complete enmity with the serpent, hence without sin and victorious over death.

The text sets enmity between the serpent and the woman, and between his seed and her seed. It names no Mary and no conception. “He shall bruise thy head” points to the offspring, and the New Testament speaks of that victory as Christ’s (Romans 16:20 says the God of peace will bruise Satan under the church’s feet). Even if the woman is read as Mary, enmity with the serpent does not mean she was conceived without sin. The text can be read to fit the dogma. It cannot be read to teach it.

The Greek word kecharitomene, translated “highly favored” and in Latin “full of grace”, names a lasting state of grace, which means she was without sin from the start.

The word is a participle that says she has been favored. It does not say when, or that she was never a sinner. Gabriel’s next words are “thou hast found favor with God” (Luke 1:30), the way Scripture says it of others. Orthodox and Protestant readers both reply that the word does not say what the dogma needs. The verse honors Mary, as A1 does; it does not teach a conception free of sin.

The woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars, is Mary glorified in heaven.

Many readers, including many Catholic ones, take the woman as Israel or the church. The chapter itself points that way: her child is “caught up unto God” (12:5), and the dragon makes war with “the rest of her seed, that keep the commandments of God, and hold the testimony of Jesus” (12:17). Her seed are the church, and so the woman is the people from whom Christ came, in a vision full of signs. A symbol in a vision does not tell of an event in the life of Mary.

God took Enoch, and Elijah went up by a whirlwind (2 Kings 2:11), so God can take someone bodily to Himself. He did so for Mary.

The texts prove God can, and no one disputes it. Scripture records both. It records no taking up of Mary. That God did it for Enoch and Elijah is no evidence that He did it for Mary, and no text records it of her. The first record of the Assumption is about 500 years after Christ (H3).

Mary tells her son “They have no wine” and He acts. This is intercession by Mary for people in need, and so she may be asked to intercede still.

Mary spoke to her son face to face, while living, at a feast. It shows a mother telling Jesus of a need, and it shows her last words in the Gospels: “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it”, which point to Him. It does not say she hears prayer from heaven or that anyone is to address her. The living asked each other for prayer (Romans 15:30); the Scripture never shows anyone asking the dead.

The elders offer the prayers of the saints to the Lamb. So the saints in heaven carry our prayers to God and join in them.

In the vision the elders hold bowls of incense, “which are the prayers of the saints”, before the Lamb, and Catholics read this as the saints in heaven presenting our prayers. Grant that reading: the prayers are still the saints’ prayers to God, and the scene is a sign in a vision, not an act the church is told to do. No one on earth is shown praying to the elders, and nothing says they hear anyone. In Revelation 6:9-10 the slain cry out to God. The step to praying to the departed still has no command, example or promise behind it (A3).

Paul told the churches to hold the traditions they were taught, by word or by letter. The church holds from the apostles’ word what the letters do not record.

The traditions are those “which ye were taught” by the apostles, by word or by letter. The Thessalonians had the apostles’ own voice. A church today holds an apostolic tradition only if it can show it came from the apostles, and for both dogmas the earliest record is centuries late (H3, H8) and the writer who tried to learn what was held knew nothing (H1). Where the apostles’ word is in doubt, the New Testament’s own examples are Paul’s warning to Galatia (S9) and the Bereans’ habit of examining the Scriptures (S10).

Study

• Luke has the angel call Mary “highly favored” and says “Blessed art thou among women” (Luke 1:28, 1:42). What does it mean to honor her as the text does, and what would go beyond it?
• The first record of the Dormition is about 500 years after Christ (H3), and of the Immaculate Conception, about 1,000 (H8). Does lateness settle whether a teaching is true, or only change who has the burden of proof?
• Catholics and Orthodox hold the Dormition from tradition; Protestants find it unbound by the text. What would show that a tradition comes from the apostles?
• Mary told the servants at Cana “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it” (John 2:5). What does that sentence ask of someone who honors her?
• Hebrews 4:16 says draw near to the throne of grace. What does a Christian gain by asking Mary to pray, and what does Scripture tell us we already have?

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